Virgil, Sotheby's Translation.

In ye ancient times, the damsel who wished to enjoy horseback riding did not, like her successor of to-day, trust to her own ability to ride and manage her horse, but, seated upon a pad or cushion, called a "pillion," which was fastened behind a man's saddle, rode without a stirrup and without troubling herself with the reins, preserving her balance by holding to the belt of a trusty page, or masculine admirer, whose duty it was to attend to the management of the horse. We learn that as late as A. D. 1700, George III. made his entry into London with his wife, Charlotte, thus seated behind him. Gradually, however, as women became more confident, they rode alone upon a sort of side-saddle, on which by means of the reins and by bracing her feet against a board, called a "planchette," which was fastened to the front of the saddle, the rider managed to keep her seat. Such was the English horsewoman of the seventeenth century, in the time of Charles II.,—"the height of fashion and the cream of style."

To the much quoted "vanity of the fair sex" do we owe the invention of the side-saddle of our grandmothers. About the middle of the sixteenth century Catherine de Medici, wife of Henry II. of France, having a very symmetrical figure which she wished to display to advantage, invented the second pommel of the saddle, and thus, while gratifying her own vanity, was unconsciously the means of greatly benefiting her sex by enabling them to ride with more ease and freedom. To this saddle there was added, about 1830, a third pommel, the invention of which is due to the late M. Pellier, Sr., an eminent riding teacher in Paris, France. This three-pommeled saddle is now called the English saddle, and is the one generally used by the best lady riders of the present day.

This so-called "English saddle" was promptly appreciated, and wherever introduced soon supplanted the old-fashioned one with only two pommels. ([Fig. 7.])

Fig. 7.—English Saddle.

1, second pommel; 2, third pommel; 3, shield; 4, saddle‑flap; 5, cantle; 6, stirrup‑leather; 7, stirrup; 8, girths; 9, platform.

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